


The Visionary Company of Love

by treatster



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Jedi Code (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-05
Updated: 2020-02-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:07:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22557631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treatster/pseuds/treatster
Summary: Anakin doesn't understand the Jedi Code.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Shmi Skywalker
Kudos: 39





	The Visionary Company of Love

_A Jedi shall not know anger, nor hatred, nor love._

This is what is known. This is what is taught, Council to Master, Master to Padawan, an unbroken chain passed down through generations of lineages until it finally comes to Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin understands none of it.

Well. He understands the Basic well enough, to trace out each individual character of the aurebesh and solve the words. Like clicking together the parts for Threepio’s servos, he learns what the words mean, though not without a near-constant muttering of Huttese under his breath.

But, like Threepio’s personality matrix in the early days, it doesn’t make sense all together.

Does the fire of anger never blaze in any Jedi’s chest, burning for justice, against injustice, to do the right thing?

Does no horror in the galaxy ever touch the Jedi, sinking past the skin and into the marrow to steep into soul-deep hatred of terrible evil?

If that’s true—if _that's_ what makes a Jedi, Anakin thinks that he has already failed. He is, as they say, _too old._ Unsuitable.

Unworthy.

Buried deep, a dry voice whispers, _cheeska choba, soong conshag._

He crushes it.

The younglings know nothing. The Initiates know nothing, for all of their cutting words and too-quick too-quiet mutterings of Basic for Anakin to catch. For all of their sharp cruelties, they are strangely soft and innocent.

Even the Padawans, who have ventured out into the cold embrace of the galaxy and would have been the most likely to understand, know nothing. They have seen injustice. They have fought against it, for the Republic. 

They might have even mired into the muck and the dirt and felt it first-hand.

But for all of that, they had always been Jedi. They had the Force, believed in the Force, and had the comforting hope of a rescuing Master Jedi.

Anakin had no one but his own hands and his mother. There had been nothing but the faint, distant hope that he might one day earn enough to buy himself back. To buy his mother back. That he might one day know his own worth and not have to calculate the price in wupiupi or Republic credits.

Regardless, he sometimes finds himself obsessively counting up how much he’s worth now. Sometimes he even compares it against the cost of the food and drink, the clothes and bedding.

Is he worth it? Worth the expense, he means. Humans live to about eighty standard, and though he has not yet calculated a year’s worth of _Jedai_ living, he thinks that he will soon be more expensive to keep than his value at auction.

Not that the Jedi would sell. He’s Master Obi-Wan’s now.

He calculates, nonetheless.

He’s young and a boy, so perhaps it’s five thousand.

But he knows how to fix things. Six thousand. If he had finished Threepio, maybe he could have even added an extra five hundred.

Now, he’s a Jedi. Ish. 

Padawan. 

Would Padawans count as a Jedi? Half a Jedi? Would Knights be worth three-quarters of a Jedi?

Apprenticeship made it a little more complicated. Anakin has wondered whether a Jedi would count more as a learned _droisha_ , or a _whirleesha_ exotic in his spare time.

If they only had the laserswords - lightsabers - they’d be comfortably _droisha_ and Anakin would stay at six thousand five hundred. Maybe an even seven thousand. But, as the various Masters liked to say and repeat over and over again like a droid with a broken vocabulator: _the Force is always with us_.

He weighs it over and over and decides that Jedi are worth more as people-with-the-Force rather than people-skilled-with-lightsaber-or-whatever.

So, then Anakin would be _whirleesha_ and that would bump him up to a spectacular ten thousand wupiupi. He’d only be worth more when he became a really real _Jedai_ with the laser- lightsaber and everything.

Sometimes, it makes him giggle, just a bit, to know that he was now worth at least twice as much as his pod. 

He could buy Mom with just himself and have credits left over. A slave for a slave and money besides.

When he arrives at that thought, as he always does, he always feels-

Sad.

_A Jedi shall not know love._

The Jedi had never known Mom either, or they would understand. They would understand the sometimes near-overwhelming fear Anakin feels in the solitary moments before sleep when he remembers _amu_ and is almost guilty all over again.

She had let him go. But Anakin had always thought that they would have become free together. Now, he is free and she is not and that makes all the difference.

If Mom were free, she would no longer have to cower in corners, and would be free to hold her head up in Mos Espa. If Mom were free, she wouldn’t have to flinch at too-loud words and too-quick gestures.

If Mom were free, she would no longer be weighed down by the chip in her body, the mechanical tether that chains her to Watto.

Watto was a better master than most, but he was still a master. They had never been more than things he owned.

If Anakin just knew that she was safe, that she was free to own herself, then he’d stop gasping awake at night, sick with guilt and fear.

It is good that there is one less slave on Tatooine; Anakin is lighter already. It would be better if they were all free.

But what was done was done and Anakin already knew that he’d see Mom again.

He just hoped that she would be free too when he did. Or he would do it himself.

_Do_ the Jedi know nothing of the visionary company of love? Do they know nothing of its terrible absence?

Of course they do. Anger, hatred, even love touches the Jedi, for they are as real as we are.

But they do not _know_ it, do not become it. It does not etch itself into their bones and replace their heart in greedy consumption.

For—

_There is no emotion, there is peace._

Anakin's failing, some might say, is that he feels too much. Or perhaps it is because he is too old, too attached. Perhaps there is some inherent flaw in this shining jewel of a vergence in the Force that makes him unsuitable for the Jedi.

Or perhaps it just might be that Anakin Skywalker has never forgotten the weight of a slave's chip, has never forgotten the burning heat of Tatooine, no matter how much he tries. And no matter how much Obi-Wan Kenobi tries, there are some parts of Anakin Skywalker that he will never understand.

Anakin Skywalker wanted to become a Jedi. In the end, he was, for a time.

**Author's Note:**

>  _cheeska choba_ : an offer that cheats me out of my money; lit: cheat(ing) offer  
>  _soong_ : it's  
>  _conshag_ : compound of _con_ (inferior) and _shag_ (slave); inferior-slave, or a worthless slave that is of no use (to me)  
>  _droisha_ : compound of _droi_ (droid) and _shag_ (slave); droid-slave, or a learned slave with more skills than otherwise  
>  _whirleesha_ : compound of _whirlee_ (dancers) and _shag_ (slave); dancing-slave, or an exotic slave owned more for their looks and origins rather than skill  
>  _amu_ : Mother (credit to fialleril)
> 
> Hover over unfamiliar words for a more natural translation in context.


End file.
